The Morning GIF: Sam Cannon's snowfall

Here at the Daily Dot, we have an unofficial tradition of sharing GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you into the circle. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

Sam Cannon’s beautiful shot of falling snow on bare branches has been liked, shared, and reblogged a total of 55,654 times.

Unfortunately, virtually all of those shares failed to give the image context or credit.

An artist, student, and photographer, Cannon originally posted the image on Feb. 12. It was picked up by IMGFave Tumblr and subsequently LovesMisery, both of which did not include the original URL.

Cannon’s credit line (and altered URL), which are in the post now, appear to have been added afterward. Now the image is credited not with a link on the image itself, but with a link to Cannon’s home page on a separate line. This means previous reblogs missed credit altogether and subsequent reblogs could strip out the credit, leaving only the image.

And it appears that they did, by the hundreds and thousands. The Daily Dot could not reach the LovesMisery blogger, identified only as Briana.

On Feb. 18, the Internet swallowed its own tail as a friend of his saw the image on Tumblr and reblogged it, tagging Cannon, whereupon Cannon reblogged the reblog. She grudgingly admitted maybe it was time she started watermarking again.

Tumblr normally gets the trail of accreditation right. Because the original image was not reblogged in normal fashion, the subsequent reblogs did not credit the source unless they deliberately went out of their way to include the link, and they happened after the credit had been added.

To add insult to injury, the original image on Sam Cannon’s own Tumblr only has 546 notes. The artist’s own website is literally one-hundredth as popular as the blog that made her viral.

On the upside, at least now he has something in common with Van Gogh.

Correction: Without context or confirmation, the original version of this article mistakenly identified the gender of Sam Cannon. We regret the error.